Stripes are applied to roadways, parking lots, airport runways and taxiways, and the like for directing the movement and placement of vehicles. Durable paints are sprinkled with small reflective glass beads to enable nighttime visibility of the lines due to reflection by the beads of vehicle headlights.
Prior art painting systems used to apply marking lines to long lengths of highway generally use large vehicles dedicated to single use. Because of their large size, lack of maneuverability, high labor consumption and expense, these machines are generally inappropriate for use on smaller projects, such as parking lots, warehouse floors, short sections of highway repair and the like. Such applications generally require enhanced maneuverability because of short lines, line discontinuity, and the presence of obstacles to be avoided.
Prior art walk behind striping machines are widely used for striping parking lots, warehouse floors, short sections of highway repair and the like. The walk behind machine works well for striping short lines. Walk behind striping machines are typically available in airless or compressed air versions. In the compressed air version, an onboard air compressor and/or compressed air storage tank supplies pressurized air that is used to disperse the paint and to disperse the glass beads into the applied paint. However, many painting contractors prefer the ease of use and superior painting performance of an airless system. In the airless version, paint is pumped from a reservoir to specially designed airless spray heads. As the airless versions do not generally have a source of compressed air, a gravity-fed and mechanically-actuated bead dispenser is used. While the airless paint sprayer offers superior painting performance, the gravity-fed and mechanically-actuated bead dispenser is generally considered inferior to the version that uses compressed air.